Languages and Writing

People spoke two major language groups in the Mediterranean
and West Asian areas in
the ancient and medieval periods. These are Indo-European and Semitic. In
southern Africa, most people spoke either
a Bantu language or a Khoisan language. Indo-European languages came to
be spoken in India as well,
but other languages also were spoken. In Central Asia, most people spoke
variations of Turkic languages. And in China, people spoke different variants
of Chinese.

The Indo-European language group seems to have originated between the Black
Sea and the Caspian Sea, in modern Georgia (see
map). Around 3000 BC some of the people who
spoke this language began to travel away from here. Some of them went west
toward the Atlantic ocean and these are now known as the Celts, and they
speak the Celtic languages: Gaelic, Welsh, Breton and Cornish. Another group
went east toward China, and
these are now known as the Tocharians, though they speak Chinese now. A
little later, others travelled over the Black Sea toward the Mediterranean
or south to West Asia. Some of them settled
in Italy, where Indo-European became Latin.
Others settled in Greece,
where Indo-European became Greek.
Some went to West Asia, where they spoke Hittite
and Persian, and some went
all the way south to India, where they
spoke Sanskrit. Some went north,
where Indo-European turned into German,
Danish, Swedish, and English. The people who stayed more or less where they
were in the Balkans and Russia began to speak the Slavic and Baltic languages: Russian,
Polish, Lithuanian.

The Semitic languages include Hebrew,
Arabic, Aramaic (the language of Jesus
and his disciples), Canaanite,
Akkadian, Phoenician,
Syriac, and, as more distant relations, ancient Egyptian,
modern Berber, and some of the languages of East
Africa. They were spoken mainly in West Asia,
along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea, in the Arabian
peninsula, and along the Mediterranean and East coasts of Africa.
Most likely the language group started out somewhere around Lebanon or Syria,
and spread from there eastward into Mesopotamia
and southward into the Arabian peninsula and Egypt (see
map). Egyptian split off
very early, and is very different from the other Semitic languages. Arabic
seems to be the closest to what Semitic languages were like a long time
ago, probably because people who spoke Arabic lived in the Arabian peninsula and rarely met people who spoke other languages. So their language didn't
change much, while the Jews, Phoenicians,
and others who lived along the Mediterranean coast were always talking to
strangers, and this changed their language more quickly. When the Umayyads conquered North Africa and West Asia in the 600s AD, they brought Arabic with them to most of the Islamic Empire, though people kept on speaking the old Indo-European languages, Persian or Kurdish, in Iran. Then not long afterward, Central Asian speakers of Turkic languages moved into West Asia, and people in Turkey learned to speak Turkish instead of Arabic.

Karen Eva Carr, PhD.Assoc. Professor Emerita, History
Portland State University

Read more

Professor Carr holds a B.A. with high honors from Cornell University in classics and archaeology, and her M.A. and PhD. from the University of Michigan in Classical Art and Archaeology. She has excavated in Scotland, Cyprus, Greece, Israel, and Tunisia, and she has been teaching history to university students for a very long time.

Quatr.us (formerly "History for Kids") is entirely supported by your generous donations and by our sponsors. Most donors give about $10. Can you give $10 today to keep this site running? Or give $50 to sponsor a page?